Where are they now? – Ellen

Last week I was very excited to find in my mailbox a postcard from Israel with a lionfish on the front.  Even more exciting was that the postcard was from Ellen (PC37, Denmark) who has been diving in the Red Sea with lionfish, moray eels, scorpionfish and clownfish. Ellen also saw very large sea turtles and was still hoping to see dolphins and manta rays when she wrote.  She is completing her dive master certification in the 24 degree Celsius water of the Red Sea, but claims that she misses canadian waters.

Ellen was a student in both Marine Science and Biology and a very active diver during her time here at Pearson College.  She also participated in reconstructing the sea lion skeleton that is currently suspended in the floating lab.

UPDATE: 5 January 2013 – just realized that I didn’t include a photo of Ellen – just the lionfish postcard! Here she is as a ‘chubby flashlight fish’ and middle right in the class photo below.

Where are they now? – Danielle and Felix

Felix (PC36, Austria) and Danielle (PC37, The Netherlands) recently began their first year of studies at the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban, Scotland. This is one of the campuses of the University of the Highlands and Islands and it is located on the west coast of Scotland.

Danielle (above in front of the SAMS academic building) and Felix were both students in Marine Science and very active divers. We look forward to hearing about their marine adventures in Scotland and beyond!

***UPDATE: Here’s a link to Danielle’s blog chronicling her adventures:

http://danielledejonge.blog.com/

T-shirts & octopuses

Here is what the latest Marine Science t-shirt will look like:

Lucas drew the octopus (that will be slightly larger than shown above) and combined various designs submitted by students to produce this work of art.

And speaking of octopuses, the link below is to an article about an octopus catching and consuming a gull at the breakwater in Victoria.  Wow!

A gull-eating octopus in Victoria, BC

IB exam 2012

Today was the big day for second year marine scientists…  they wrote the final exam after two years of studying marine ecosystems and processes.  For the most part they seem very happy and are relieved to be finished with the first IB exam of the season.

Students were particularly happy with the brain food between papers – see James foraging for fish in the foreground below.

Spiny lumpsuckers!!

Yesterday, Danie (PC 37) collected the substrates she hung off the Pearson College docks in November for her Marine Science independent research project.  The substrates included glass, plastic, metal, fabric and wood. On two of the substrate types, she found a total of five spiny lumpsuckers!

For more information on the Pacific spiny lumpsucker (Eumicrotremus orbis), see http://www.fishbase.us/summary/Eumicrotremus-orbis.html

Deep sea costume party

The creatures that live in the deep sea are unusual, as are the students that study Marine Science at Pearson College. Today and on Monday second year marine scientists each dressed up as a fish or an invertebrate that lives in the deep sea. This is the result: